The Tree Sprite
by MissHikaHaru
Summary: "She saw the collapsed trees - not as bowing with adulation as she previously had - as figures of the fallen, dead bodies cut down by her hand." The 15th Year of the Games brings with it a simple lumber girl from District 7, but - once entering the arena - her fatal beauty and black humor make her anything BUT simple beneath her skin, as she becomes the most formidable tribute yet


The day was crisp, pleasant enough but cold - almost too cold to be at work hauling lumber, as many were not, as coupled with the brisk bite of the occasional wind. The ancient forest was a great reservoir of silence out of which trickled a thin, slow stream, wearily babbling in sleepy chatter to the weak sunlight listening in patience. When once the days had been long and warm, now so were they short and dull and dark; what with the leaves bereft of both voluptuous greens and seasonal reds, being nothing but wrinkled scraps of brown and black like dead things hanging from the ashen trees - all slowly creaking to demise as the fell swing of a single rhythmic hatchet; the short axe was cleaved, stroke after stroke, the only noise but for the grunts of the girl whose beaten hands wielded the tool.

Such labour was a wear to the steady muscles in her sinewy arms, slender but lean and strong as willow branches. Cheeks hard with a ruddy glow, her hair - oh, brash colour against reclusion of the scene - seemed its violent red equal, swaying 'cross her back each time her arm sought out more and more depth towards the pine's sap-strewn core. Stump upon hard-hewn stump surrounded her, trees felled like walls of a ruin in her wake, a circumference lasting some twelve feet in shape of some enormous fan.

Drawing back her blade, with a lunge of her leather-clad foot, she sent her latest conquest crashing to the ground with a great tremor, a small cloud of pine needles rising and then falling like a feeble outstretch for pity. The girl slung the hatchet about her shoulder, rolling her slim neck as she walked to sit upon the freshly cleaved stump. Dropping the axe she stretched her aching arms, wiping a weathered hand across her brow, breathing deep through those rosebud lips; despite the staleness of the day, frost crystallizing the grateful boughs she had not yet rent from their roots, such effort to have been expended was burning through her like the blazing tint of her long red tresses; she could well have breathed fire to the onlooker, with sparkling breath rolling from her lips like smoke residual from flames crackling within the confines of her mouth.

She stood, stretching her sore back, and turned about to admire her handiwork. A grin contorted her small mouth, pink lips parted, to see all trees bowing before her like she was some great figure lauding over a nation; she was quite proud of herself, actually, to have cut down twenty-three all by herself. Absently she brushed the front of her plain blue skirt, displacing the dried brown needles and dust from the dress so out of place for such an engagement - to be chopping trees in her very best, but who was she to care? Footsteps approached haphazardly, leaves and twigs snapping in iambic pentameter - a disjointed rhythm whereby the person to whom the feet were (presumably) attached had absolutely no _idea_ where they were going, treading around uncertainly through the mass of trees both struck down and still sentient.

"Little sister!" a worried voice called out, and the girl turned her scarlet head in its direction. "Little sister, where are you? _Little sister!_"

"I'm here, Camellia!" she replied, picking up the axe - with a little difficulty, for its blade had sunk deep into the soil and needed some particular effort to be pulled loose - and began towards the sound of disgruntled footsteps.

"That's not exactly _helping,_ you know!"

"I'm coming, now, don't worry."

At the edge of the trees that were yet to be felled the girl turned back for a moment, hand resting on the gnarled trunk of a silver birch. She smiled again, thinking wistfully, until the meagre sun was enveloped within a cloud and the forest became suddenly quite dark. Her little grin faded, as she saw the collapsed trees - not as bowing with adulation as she previously had - as figures of the fallen, dead bodies cut down by her hand. Her rosebud lips parted, breath escaping as if in fear, and time seemed to halt in the girl's horror.

"We're going to be late for the Reaping at this rate! _Come __**on!**_"

"Coming!" the girl shouted back, tearing her dark green eyes away before turning to slip away through the trees; before disappearing from the scene entirely, she looked back, seeing a perfectly innocent assortment of stumps and trunks. More than a little confused, she carried on her way with gaze solely directed upon her thick-booted feet.

"_There_ you are!" Camellia said in exasperation, causing her to look up in time to see the late-teen bustling over with hands on hips. "Honestly, what _have_ you been doing?"

"I was chopping trees," the younger replied truthfully, shrugging the shoulders across which she balanced the hatchet by resting her wrists over it on either side, "to sell timber to the Peacekeepers. You know, to buy your medicine."

"In your Reaping dress!?" muttered her sister, bending to her knees and scraping off the mud spattering the pale blue hem as she slurred incoherent aspersions beneath her breath.

"It's only a dress, Cam," the girl sighed, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. "Really, does it matter so much?"

"Stop that," the elder instructed, straightening up and holding her little sister by the shoulders. "Just, stop - what if you're chosen, today?"

"But I won't be-"

"How do you know that?" Camellia interrupted, thin-fingered grip tightening. "How do you even know that they won't pick your name out of that bowl? If you go up there, onto that stage, where all of Panem will see you... What do you think they'll see? A scruffy little girl, who didn't bother to brush her hair today, or put on clothes that are clean to show respect to the President-"

"But I don't respect him!" the younger flared, "What he's doing with the Games is wrong! He shouldn't treat people like-"

"If you even _think_ that it's treason!" the elder snapped, fear contorting her feature. "But you _have_ to look your best, little sister - _do you hear me?_ We're from District 7, and almost nobody in the Capitol cares about any tributes but those in the first three Districts - looking desirable is the only way to attract even one sponsor. You understand, don't you? We lost our little brother three years ago," She pulled the short axe from her sister's hands, tossing it aside and drawing the younger woman into a tender embrace, "I'll be damned if I lose you, too; and, what with Mother and Father... well..."

For a moment the younger did not respond, a regretful silence hanging, but then she raised those willow sapling arms and returned her sister's hold.

"Now, come on," Camellia said brusquely, taking her sister's work-worn hand and leading her back through the trees, "if we hurry we might have a chance of cleaning you up before getting to the Reaping Square."

Without any further (verbal) protest the younger allowed herself to be pulled along in her sister's wake through the slowly thinning trees, and down the dirt path lined with lumber stacks towards the village. The two passed their fellows as they walked by on their way to the Reaping Square, run about with Peacekeepers and scaffolding as the enormous stage was busily being completed and the grand microphone being tested, striding through the oncoming throng of pallid faces like fire fighting against the wind. At almost every timber house they passed was a tearful mother embracing her son or daughter, clinging on for dear life as if her hold of their child would keep any force from taking them from her. Once there, Camellia threw open the door to the tiny house they shared, and the two sisters disappeared inside. Almost at once the elder had retrieved a comb from some cabinet or other and ushered the younger onto a three-legged stool, gripping to her shoulder with her left hand as she began to brush the leaves and knots from the other's curly crimson hair. As time drew on, the seated girl could hear her sister stifling little sobs, and she curled one of those small-fingered hands around the other's upon her own left shoulder. She held on, giving an encouraging squeeze every now and then when she took a particularly tremulous breath.

Neither exchanged a solitary word to the other, until Camellia pronounced she was finished with the long copper braid that hung down her little sister's front. They held hands as they left the house, after the younger had sufficiently cleaned her face with a little water and a handkerchief, and went to follow the stragglers towards the Reaping Square; Camellia was all too aware of the gendarmerie line of Peacekeepers following close behind with the military rhythm of their marching footsteps; she tightened her hold of her baby sister, the girl she had been nursing by herself for the last eight years since the death of both their parents.

It was always a breathtaking sight - in some terrifying, morbid manner - when you first saw the completed stage; the ominous height, the drapery like black clouds - dangling from the scaffolding twenty-five feet up - the people lined up in rows like cattle, girls segregated from boys as if they were two types of product at market, and those two enormous glassy domes filled with pieces of paper with names enclosed within the fold that so held the fate of every young man and woman in each and every District. The place was heavy, intense, the air thick-set and cold with fear. Eyes were always restless, darting back and forth and back and forth, fixing on the faces of their parents, their brother, sister, the girl across from two houses down, the carpenter's son, their best friend, the extravagant guests from the Capitol, the hazmat helmet of a Peacekeeper. Unease made the silence as deafening as a thunderstorm.

The two girls settled into place with all the other young women, gripping tight as they could to one another's hand as if they were smelted together by iron, knuckles burning white - although both, despite being uncharacteristic of the younger, were already pale as the moon; their scarlet hair burnt out fiercely atop their heads, like an emblem of their steadfast determination to stand by the other's side forever. It seemed the only colour at all in this sea of people, their clothes and bodies mattified to one solid mass of pallid skin and white costume.

Footsteps slowly, deliberately, sounded and all eyes were upon the profligate woman upon the stage, her lacquered fingers clasping around the microphone stand.

"Welcome, welcome!" she tittered, batting those outrageous feathered eyelashes with a pout of lips painted lavender blue and shimmering with glitter in the dull white sunlight. "Yes, welcome to the Reaping of the 15th Annual Hunger Games, ha~" The woman let out a bird-like chirrup of a laugh, which none reciprocated; she just seemed to smile impishly at the young faces crowded before, as if their vacant faces showed the absolute extent of happiness to have been there - to have been waiting to know what two poor, pitiless, souls would die this time; as of yet, for the meagre District 7, there had been no previous victor and - therefore - no hope. At last realising that her glamorous smile was not striking happiness nor inspiration to any child's heart - indeed, a few in their first year of Reaping had begun to cry - it faded, and she cleared her bejewelled throat.

"As I'm sure you all know," she continued, uncomfortably patting a many-ringed hand to the peacock blue ringlets ruched beneath a plumed purple hat, "the Games are called to commemorate the sorely won peace after the rebellion, long ago, and with it we celebrate the new era! And so, each and every year, all Districts will offer up in tribute one young man and young woman for this pageant of ultimate honour, courage, and sacrifice; the time has come, today, for myself - Sylica Sol, District 7's representative - to select two such courageous youngsters from the sea of beautiful candidates before my very eyes." And what eyes they were, coloured an orange sort of brown as bright and gleaming as amber, rimmed like a mystical masquerade with contours and glittering swirls of cerulean sapphire as delicate as wings on a butterfly. "Just to be polite," she giggled, stepping eagerly towards the enormous glass before the sea of girls, "we'll honour the rule of 'ladies first', ha~ ha~"

She reached in a long-nailed hand, thin tongue just poking out from between her pale-painted lips; Camellia's already intense grip of her sister tightened. Sylica plucked a piece of paper from the mound, and began picking away at the wax seal imprinted with District 7's marque.

"Please... _please_..."

The younger girl turned her head to Camellia, seeing her eyes clasped shut and whispering that one word over and over in a voice so quiet it could have been mistaken for a breath.

"Sycamore Brun!" the brilliantly coloured woman announced, and the girl felt her heart stop beating. She turned her dark green gaze up to the stage, seeing all the girls in front of her twisting their necks to look at her with saddened, terrified, eyes. "~Sycamore, where are you dear?"

What with almost every other eye upon her it was impossible for her to have been less conspicuous. Sycamore could already hear the footsteps of a Peacekeeper approaching. She looked once more at her sister, but was unable to speak when she saw the tears streaming silently down her pale cheeks and those deep grey eyes fixed on her with so much sorrow it was almost hard to breathe. The younger Brun sister stood up on tip-toe and kissed her sister's dampened cheek, soft and plump and wet, before she felt a cold gloved hand on her shoulder; she could do nothing at all but watch in horror as her elder sister collapsed to her knees, face buried against the dirt, and beginning to wail with unadulterated agony; Sycamore knew that Camellia would not, and could not, volunteer in her stead, for her sister - though older by almost three years - was weak and had been sickly for near half her life, and could only survive daily life by having Sycamore go out and chop lumber with the men of the District to earn their money since their brother had been taken by the Games. If her sister volunteered, Sycamore doubted if she would even outlast the training. And, unlike her sister, no tears fell from her own eyes; Sycamore Brun - walking to meet her bloody fate on that cold, crisp day - was not fazed in the slightest by the prospect of the death match she had been warned after for years. Aged fifteen, born the very day the last tribute had died in the first year of the Games, she defied if there was any other soul more skilled with the blade of an axe in either hand. Rather than being afraid that she may very well have been walking to her death sentence upon that stage, as she placed her foot upon the bottommost stair, she was ecstatic.


End file.
